1. So the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.
2. You are to speak everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh that he must release the Israelites from his land.
3. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and although I will multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt,
4. Pharaoh will not listen to you. I will reach into Egypt and bring out my regiments, my people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment.
5. Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I extend my hand over Egypt and bring the Israelites out from among them.
6. And Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them.
7. Now Moses was eighty years old and Aaron was eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
8. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
9. “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Do a miracle,’ and you say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ it will become a snake.”
10. When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, they did so, just as the Lord had commanded them – Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants and it became a snake.
11. Then Pharaoh also summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the magicians of Egypt by their secret arts did the same thing.